


In the Darkness of the Sea

by writinginthedust



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 21:27:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15300372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writinginthedust/pseuds/writinginthedust
Summary: Something I wrote as Nesta's mindset post ACOMAF and pre ACOWAR





	In the Darkness of the Sea

The stillness of the surface hid an ocean full of sharks.

Nesta looked out upon the water and imagined them swimming. In her mind she could picture the sunlight as it broke through the darkness and in her mind she saw the light dance off their grey skin as they circled the deep with pointed fins and sharpened teeth.

There were times when she shut her eyes and felt them circling her.

At first she couldn’t remember and that made it easier. Her focus was only on Elain and the way her gentlest sister folded in on herself. Nesta let her rage burn her then, a small flame that she stoked into an inferno.

They were now in this place, surrounded by too many fae and they swum about her trying to tear chunks from her skin. _I’m not dead yet,_ she wanted to say but she knew they didn’t scavenge. They wanted flesh that was living but she wasn’t too sure what being alive was. The Autumn one lurked in the shadows with his snares, waiting to trap Elain if Nesta left her alone long enough. And Nesta knew he had teeth like the rest.

But the Autumn one wasn’t the most dangerous creature in the water. There were others.

Nesta thought she had hidden it deep. She had thought she had pushed it into some dark, cobwebbed corner of her heart where it couldn’t touch her. But she had been wrong. In the quiet of the night it whispered her own name across the wind. _Nesta,_ it sighed. _Nesta._ And when it did she knew her fear had arrived.

It happened in the bath.

The fear waited inside her chest behind her sternum and beat along with her heart, hiding in its pulses. Her leg, new and inhuman, slid into the water and the fear rose to the surface. Nesta froze as the water tried to claim her and she could only watch as it crawled up her body and covered her skin. It made its way into her lungs and Nesta clawed at her throat, her fingernails trying to pierce through her tendons as she gasped for air.

It was an illusion. Nesta still stood, one leg in the water and the other on dry ground. There was no crawling water and she wasn’t drowning. It was magic, it was nothing but filthy fae trickery.

It was later when she stared out at the stars sparkling over the sea that she realised the truth. It wasn’t an illusion, there had never been any trickery. Nesta was beginning to remember.

No one asked and so she didn’t tell. Nesta couldn’t speak with Elain. She couldn’t bring herself to probe her sister for her most painful of memories so Nesta decided to become like the coral on the seabed; sharp and hard and impenetrable.

Still, those sharks kept swimming.

There was death and rebirth and that was what was what threatened to drip off the tip of her tongue. She wanted to share with someone how it had felt to die.

From the outside she saw that the cauldron was not infinite. Before she went under Nesta thought she would be able to hold onto the sides and hold onto her life. She had a small and worthless thought that she could survive in that same minute of time it had taken for Elain to die.

It did not happen that way. Nesta plunged into the darkness and it had closed up over her head like ice on the river. There were no sides to the ocean and that was where she found herself, sinking like a stone and fighting for her life.

Nesta hadn’t been alone in her final moments. That, at least, she knew. Shapes circled her, screeching out her name, and those shapes had eyes and those shapes had teeth. Her lungs burned as her heartbeat pounded and her body thrashed.

The death throes came. Her body gave its final spasm and her heartbeat stilled. Water was in her throat and flooded her lungs. The magic sparked around her like an electric current and it tasted her, testing her worth.

She drifted for a moment, her body dead but not her mind, not yet. Her mind held onto a word, a simple word she had spoken many times. _No._ Her mind thought it again, her last ever word in this world, but the magic around her came too close.

It hissed. _Worthy,_ it jeered as it licked her skin and brushed its scales on her body. The magic slithered around her neck and tangled in her floating hair. It had come too close. The current sparked life into her chest and she felt her dead heart squeeze.

A pulse and a twitch. Her body thrashed again but this time for the life coming back in. Pitch surrounded her and she remained lost and drowning in the dark. Nesta heard her name again, but this time it didn’t come from the shrieking creatures surrounding her. It came from far away, _Nesta,_ it cried. _Nesta, Nesta, Nesta._ Despair and anger pierced the surface of the cauldron and pierced through her skin.

A light had come to show her the way.

Something brushed against her face, either fingers or a fin. The scent of rot filled her nose and the chill creeped into her bones. Nesta knew her time was limited. She opened her mouth and drew breath but it was water, not air, that filled her. This time she forced the magic towards her and it squirmed, trapped in the tide of her making.

Nesta felt its struggle but it was too late, it had gotten too close. It had wanted a taste and now it would be devoured. Nesta tore into it, her teeth sinking in and ripping apart and she swallowed down its fear and anger and seized onto as much of the power as possible.

_No,_ the creatures howled around her but she had said the same thing and they still stole from her. The water bubbled but before it could boil, the cauldron emptied and she sprawled out onto the floor. New heart, new lungs, new bones. Nesta had died in the darkness and a new creature was in her place.

She told no one. She said nothing. Her heart had died and come alive again and it could store even more secrets in the space love and hope left behind. So she sat and observed as these other creatures surrounded her, this time with their wings and their shadows and snarls.

Nesta waited, knowing the truth.

Not all sharks swam in the sea.


End file.
